


Grief

by ELG



Series: Friends With Benefits [3]
Category: X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 06:27:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7497648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of X-2, Logan decides a different form of therapy might be needed to stave off Scott's death wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief

Logan had no illusions about himself. He didn’t think he was the smartest guy in the mansion – hell, half of the kids seemed to know more about some things than he did. He just seemed to be the only guy who had noticed what was really going on with Cyclops.

Everyone else was just going with ‘grief’; and, yeah, Summers stank of sorrow, and salt from the tears he was crying in his room where no one else could see them fall. And Logan would have been on board with everyone else’s sympathetic murmurs of ‘He just needs time’ and ‘Let him have his own space’ if he hadn’t been picking up so much brittle self-loathing and that strong reek of death wish. Perhaps he was getting it, when no one else was, because he was smelling it on the guy, or perhaps he was just better than everyone else at reading body language. Or perhaps he just understood darkness in a way that they didn’t; not the darkness in the world that kept them hiding out here, pretending not to be mutants so no one else would murder them or their children; but the inner darkness people carried around inside themselves, the one that whispered self-hatred in their heads. Or maybe he was the only one Jean had been that brutal with when it came to explaining Scott.

It was her voice he was hearing in his head right now: Jean being patient and impatient at once. Trusting him to get it, because she had faith in him; annoyed with him for not already having gotten it without her, because she considered that a choice on his part. Looking so beautiful with the moonlight pouring in through the window, trying to get him to comprehend that Scott looked so calm and poised and like he had everything together as a hard-fought for strategy to cover up the guy who was always one bad experience away from another nervous breakdown. 

And that was the guy who hadn’t just lost his girlfriend when she had sacrificed herself to save the rest of them. He had lost his best friend and the one person on the planet who truly knew him, knew his history, and his faults, and his weaknesses, and loved him anyway, so completely that she had opened up her mind to him and invited him in. 

Logan grimaced. “Fuck.”

Because screw everyone else and their calm, wise, keeping their distance thing. They were forgetting the skinny kid with the bruises and the band-aids. They were forgetting the one who had been told he was worthless and weak and a freak who needed to be punished. Without Jean around to anchor him, Scott wasn’t what everyone else thought he was, he was exactly what Logan thought he smelled like: a guy who really wanted to kill himself right now because Jean Grey had died for him and he didn’t want to go on living without her.

 

Having yelled for Hank to go straight to the control room and undo whatever that dick Cyclops had surely done, Logan got to the Danger Room just in time. The red light was on but he guessed Hank had just overridden the door controls for him because he got to bust in there to find himself in a tropical hell-scape in which sentinels were blasting, monsters were roaring, and – to add insult to injury – the bad guy looked just like him.

Summers was down and bleeding but still grimly keeping sentinels off with his optic beams. He rolled under a sentinel fist and blasted that one’s head off, then just managed to get enough force behind a second blast to knock back the winged monster that had been about to pounce on him from a swampy tree. He back flipped onto his feet, a micro-grimace briefly disturbing his face as he landed, forcing himself not to limp or to clutch his side even though something had clearly thrown him around like it meant it. And then Wolverine came out of the darkness with a nasty smile on his face and even Summers with his incredible reflexes was barely rolling under his claw swipe, and the guy was so fast, and his punch was so hard, as he backhanded Summers, grabbed him, pulled him in close, kissed him with brutal mockery, flung Summers against a wall and then went for him with his claws out, ready for the kill.

Someone was roaring and it was only after he had driven his claws into that other Wolverine so hard and so deep that they sparked on his metal-coated spine that Logan realized it was him. He hurled his bleeding doppelganger away from Summers and sprang after him. He pinned the adamantium clawed bastard down hard and stabbed him through the throat, then had his claws ramming down to stab him through the eye when everything dissolved around him and it was just him trying to stab the floor where that other Wolverine had been and Summers, bleeding and breathing hard.

Logan looked over his shoulder at him and apparently even through a visor, Summers could recognize rage because he took a step backwards and held out his hands like a man encountering a lion in his path. Soothingly, Summers said, “It’s not what it looks like, Logan.”

Hurling himself up and slamming Summers back against the wall of the Danger Room, Logan said, “Why am I in the program as a fucking bad guy, Scott?”

“You’re not.”

He slammed him again. “I just saw myself there.”

Patiently, Summers said, “You’re not one of the bad guys in the Danger Program, although if you shove me one more time, you will be, and you shove me two more times you’re going to be optic blasted through that wall.”

Slamming him again, Logan said, “I know what I saw.”

“That was Mystique pretending to be you.”

“It didn’t look like Mystique to me.”

“Because it was Mystique looking like you…?”

Shoving him hard against the wall again, Logan leaned in so close that their mouths were almost touching. “It acted more like me. Except I wouldn’t kill you.”

Summers just nodded down, still maddeningly calm for someone bleeding and breathless and with his uniform in tatters. “Then why are your claws still out?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t stab you.”

He could feel Summer’s quick hot breaths against his mouth; he smelt of sweat and toothpaste and grief and tears and a faint, faint odor of Jean from the sheets or the towels that he hadn’t washed yet, just to hold onto her. He smelt of blood and bruises and a craving for more of them.

“So stab me,” Summers invited.

It was in no way fair that Logan wanted him so much right now when Cyclops was being such a dick. He took a step backwards and pulled his claws in. 

“Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

Maddeningly calm, Scott brushed some swamp from his ripped, blood-spattered uniform as if that was going to miraculously restore him to leader-of-the-X-Men neatness.

“In the Danger Room? Hardly. It’s programmed not to hurt me.”

“No, it’s programmed not to kill you. It can hurt you plenty.” Logan flicked some of the tattered uniform. “Which it looks like it did.”

Summers shrugged that off the way he was always shrugging Logan off. “A few cuts and bruises. Nothing worth bothering about.”

It felt as if what Scott was really saying was: A clawed hairy wolf-guy: nothing worth bothering about.

Logan growled and stepped back into his personal space. “That guy who supposedly wasn’t me didn’t kiss you the way Mystique kisses.”

Scott didn’t make any attempt to move away, not to turn his head so their mouths weren’t this close, or not to keep gazing back at Logan from behind that visor like he was daring him to do his worst. “Didn’t he?”

And abruptly Logan lunged in and he was kissing him, hard at first because he was pissed at him and then, like he couldn’t help himself, his hands were in Scott’s hair and his mouth was hungering for his. And Scott was kissing him back, and there was that same hitch of breath, and stumbling tongue, like this had shocked Scott as much as it had Logan, how hot and good and right this felt. Logan swung him around and shoved him against the wall again to disguise the way his fingers were so gentle against the side of his face. And, God, he wanted him. Had he ever wanted anyone this much before? If so, then the adamantium bullet had stolen it from him. They were on their toes, pushing into each other as they kissed and kissed, clutching, holding, dizzy with need, gasping with the shock of how much they wanted to fall into the other’s one warmth. Logan pulled back, panting, and Scott was panting right back at him, and his scent was as aroused as Logan’s was.

“Hank is on his way here to ask what the fuck you were playing at, fighting that many bad guys at once,” Logan said raggedly. “Which is something I want to ask you about, too.”

There was something feline about the way Scott licked his lips, savoring Logan’s taste like that, and the maddeningly calm way he said: “Okay. Let’s have a conversation about Danger Room protocols, the three of us. Sounds like a plan—”

“You son-of-a-bitch, Slim!” And of course Logan dragged him out of there and started hauling him towards his bedroom before Hank showed up and derailed them from that sex they so urgently needed to be having. Scott let himself be hauled in a way that was completely unresisting but still had some plausible deniability about it if any of the kids saw them. Logan thought not for the first time that it was as annoying as hell that he never got to be the one to play hard to get. 

He paid Scott back by shoving him down on his bed a little harder than necessary and had the satisfaction of scenting how turned on that made him as he bounced on the mattress and said, “Door,” like he wasn’t sporting wood just as urgent as Logan’s own.

He just got it locked in time before Hank hammered on it.

“Not now, Hank.” Logan turned and looked at where Scott was lying, banged up and costume ripped on his bed, and he felt like frickin’ villain now—with Scott looking like that and Logan still wanting him.

Hank said, “I need to talk to Scott.”

“Scott’s busy right now.”

There was a pause before Hank said, “Logan are _you_ going to talk to Scott?”

“Damn straight.”

Another pause. “Don’t hurt him.”

“No promises.”

And damn Summers for doing that little eyebrow flicker and quirk of his mouth like this was news to him and not exactly unwelcome news either. Logan couldn’t help noticing the way he was making no effort to get up off the bed Logan had tossed him onto either. He was sort of brittle and bitchy right now, as anyone who had tried to have a conversation with him about Jean in the last few weeks could confirm, but he was at least smelling turned on, even if it was in a bitchy, brittle, grief-damaged way. With Scott he guessed they had to consider that progress.

“Well, at least don’t kill him,” Hank called through the door.

“No promises,” Logan said grimly, still looking at Scott. “Now will you let me get…talking with him?” He listened, smelling anxiety and hesitation and not a little anger through the door, and then Hank slowly walked away. “Everyone is finding you a nightmare to know right now,” Logan told Scott shortly. “It isn’t just me.”

“Excuse me for not grieving in a way acceptable to the rest of you.”

Logan veered off towards the bathroom and Scott reached out and grabbed his arm, and when he moved like that, lithe and unexpectedly strong, Logan was all too aware of how much of his body he could see through his ripped up costume, see the way his muscles moved, Scott might be too thin right now, but he was still honed and sharp and ready to spring. If he chose to he could back flip off that bed in the time it took Logan to get out his claws. Logan’s gaze followed a flex of abdominal muscles down to the sharp jut of one exposed hip, that lean length of thigh beneath…. Logan wanted to lick the blood from his cuts, wanted to tongue his bruises to see if his healing factor would fix them, wanted to pin him down on the bed while Scott let him, unresisting, but that was what Scott wanted from him—his inner animal; whereas what Scott needed, for both their sakes, was for Logan to remain the good man Jean Grey had believed him to be.

Scott’s wrist looked as slender as a girl’s but his grip was iron-clad. “Where are you going, Logan?”

“To get the first-aid kit. You look like crap.”

“Screw that.” Scott tugged him hard towards the bed.

“Jean would have—”

Scott said provocatively, “Jean would have kissed it better.”

His mouth was so beautiful and the stubble wasn’t doing a damn thing to put Logan off. Pulling free with a sharp tug, Logan said shortly, “Jean would have kicked your ass.”

Back in the bedroom with the first aid kit, he helped peel Scott out of his ripped uniform, wincing at the injuries that revealed, not to mention the way that perfect body of his was definitely looking light a few pounds these days, then grimly set about dabbing him with antiseptic. There were a lot of surface scrapes that would heal up fine in a few days and not even leave a mark but would sting like a bastard for now, especially when the ointment went on them.

Logan said, “Do you want a painkiller?”

“No.”

“Do you at least want a drink?”

That at least seemed to get Scott’s attention. He opened his mouth to say one thing and then defiantly said, “Sure. What have you got?”

Logan reached for the whiskey and poured Scott a generous shot, keeping the bottle to have a few gulps himself. Scott tossed the whiskey off like it was water but then gasped as if the burn had been hotter than he expected. Something tickled the back of Logan’s mind, something Bobby had said mockingly about Scott being the world’s worst lightweight. Hyperbole or truth? Having healing factor, Logan didn’t get drunk for long enough to notice, or suffer from hangovers, but he had spent enough time in sleazy bars to know how much a guy with a physique like Scott’s ought to be able to swallow before it started affecting his judgment and they weren’t close to there yet. Unless, of course, he _was_ the world’s worst lightweight.

Logan looked at the cuts that were still to feel the sting of antiseptic. “Do you want another shot?”

Scott smirked. “You don’t need to get me drunk to get laid, Logan. Tonight, I’m a sure thing.”

“I was thinking of your pain levels, but screw you. No more booze for you, Summers.” He put the bottle out of reach of the bed and went back to putting antiseptic on Scott’s grazes and bandaging the worst of the cuts, burns, and bruises. Scott, being Scott, stoically bore being tended to but told Logan he was really killing the mood.

“Well, making out with a guy bleeding in ten different places was killing my mood,” Logan retorted, trying not to flinch from both the bruises on the ribcage and their prominence. “Maybe your Danger Room Wolverine gets off on that kind of thing, but I don’t.”

“The Danger Room Logan is Mystique—so, yes, she probably does.”

“Mystique doesn’t have an adamantium skeleton. The Danger Room Logan does.”

“Well, maybe I did program you in there one day when you were being more than ordinarily annoying.”

“Oh, like you’re not annoying?” Logan tied off the last bandage and then sat on the side of the bed. “Are we going to have a conversation?”

Scott shrugged, spiky as a cactus. “Let’s not.”

Naked except for the bandages, banged up, and in desperate need of a shave he was still so beautiful that it hurt Logan a little to look at him. Clothed, Scott looked untouchable and unreachable; a flawless surface who made Logan’s hackles rise; but naked, he looked like a sculptured saint; some martyr who had died tragically in a hail of piercing arrows. He was far too vulnerable like this. Logan reached out and stroked his hair back from his visor, unable to keep the ache Scott made him feel from his voice:

“You look like hell, Scott. You’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, you’re not showing up for your lessons. You’re barely speaking to any of us. Everyone knows you’re hurting. Everyone wants to help. But you won’t let us in.”

“If you think I let you drag me off to your bedroom so we could have a heart-to-heart about feelings then you need to cut back on the beer before it completely softens your brain.”

“I can’t tell if I want to punch you or kiss you right now.”

Another maddening shrug from Scott. “Well, either works for me.”

“Damnit, Scott!”

Everything had to be a lot more than ordinarily fucked up when Logan was stuck in the role of patient, understanding guy trying to offer life lessons. Everything went so much better when he was just allowed to stab things.

“I’m not trying to annoy you, Logan. I just don’t want to talk.”

Scott reached up and pulled his face down and it wasn’t rough, although his grip was firm, the kiss was tentative, a plea, not a demand; a plea Logan couldn’t resist. He found himself running his hands through Scott’s hair and kissing him back, all the sympathy Scott wouldn’t let him say aloud finding its way into that kiss. And Scott wanted this so badly. Logan had already learned that Scott had the communication skills of a tree stump. He had been shutting out anyone who tried to either tell him how sorry they were or give him a hug, which meant the last time anyone had touched him had been Logan on the plane. He might not know it, but he really needed someone to touch him again and, of course, his shattering vulnerability had got right under Logan’s defenses so he was now finding it almost impossible to deny Scott anything he wanted.

Logan kissed down his face while Scott turned his head to try to recapture his mouth, eager and coaxing at once. He had obviously never learned how to be demanding in bed, but this was as close as he got as he pushed in against Logan and breathed a taut, unwilling: “Please, Logan…I don’t want to think right now. I just want to feel.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Logan kissed him again. “You’re all banged up, Scott.”

“It doesn’t hurt. I wish it did.”

Logan cast an exasperated look at the purpling bruise on his ribs and the blood that had spotted the bandage on his arm. He very gently kissed the bruise on his side. “Scott….”

“Nothing hurts like losing Jean. You could cut me open with your claws right now and it still wouldn’t hurt enough.”

He couldn’t switch off his super-senses when it suited him so he could smell how much Scott needed bodily contact with…something. If Logan wouldn’t screw him, he had no doubt that Scott would find someone who would hurt him instead; anything to engage his body so completely that it took his mind off his grief. And he would have said this was a truly terrible idea if they hadn’t had moments of wanting each other before now and if Scott wasn’t stubborn and damaged enough to really get himself hurt either in the Danger Room or elsewhere if Logan didn’t oblige. He wasn’t being a hero, here. He wanted Scott. Had wanted him from pretty much the first moment he had laid irritable hands upon him. But he didn’t want to betray Jean by hurting the man she loved, or damage this weird, newborn friendship between himself and Scott.

“Okay, but…carefully.” He swung them over so that he was underneath and Scott was the one straddling him, worried about his weight pressing down on Scott’s bruises, and Scott kissed him hungrily, his stubble rasping against Logan’s own softer beard. His mouth was so beautiful; Scott was light and firm on top of him, agile and responsive; and he kissed down Logan’s body needily.

Logan realized, as Scott was licking and kissing him just right – mouthing his nipples and stroking curious fingers across his chest hair before nuzzling his abdomen – that long as it had been since anyone had touched Scott it was longer still since anyone had touched him. The last time he had been touched before he had held a sobbing Scott would have been when Mystique was mind-fucking him or Rogue was putting him in a coma…Damn, he needed this every bit as much as Scott did and probably for no less fucked up reasons. And Scott was clearly as attracted to Logan as Logan was to him, he could smell that on him, although he just didn’t know how personal his attraction was. He liked to think that Scott wasn’t just trying to get his engine revved, and certainly he was exploring Logan’s body with a curious reverence that was all too arousing, but that didn’t mean that it was Logan Scott was aroused by. Maybe any dangerous alpha male who could get it up for him would scratch that itch for Scott right now. Messed up with grief as Scott was at the moment, it was a little hard to tell.

But when he ran a hand down Logan’s arm then traced his ribs with his finger it felt both personal and surprisingly gentle. “I can’t feel the metal.”

“Trust me, it’s there.”

Scott mouthed at his knuckles gently and Logan caught his face in his hands and bent to kiss him again, their tongues hungry. Logan could feel himself aching with sympathy for Scott but also with need and want and hunger and sadness and a hope that he was trying not to give way to, in case it betrayed him, because nothing between them would surely ever be as simple as this. They were too different and life was too difficult.

“Just for an hour it can be this simple,” Scott breathed, kissing him back, hard and then gentle, like he didn’t know who he wanted to be with Logan or who he wanted Logan to be with him. It struck Logan like a bell tolling the time that Scott had never quite figured that out with Jean either; if he wanted her to be the all powerful telekinetic who could strip him naked with the power of her mind or the nice girl next door who had first kissed him. Perhaps that was why his responses to Scott had always been such a mass of contradictory impulses, because Scott was such a maddeningly complex man.

Logan found himself doing the same, kissing him hard, holding him firmly so his mouth could claim his, and then furrowing his fingers so gently through his hair and breathing him in, brushing his mouth across his cheekbone, nuzzling into his neck. Scott reached down, stroking Logan to get him harder while still kissing him with those needy, coaxing kisses.

“We can just rub…”

“No, Logan. I need… I need more than that….”

Scott wasn’t really a guy who asked for favors, even through gritted teeth, but for whatever reason he seemed to need this desperately, and being Scott, of course, he wasn’t going to articulate exactly why it was he needed this, even supposing he knew that himself, which Logan, frankly, doubted, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of him articulating what his bedroom preferences were or what he did or didn’t like. Logan was going to have to work that out himself from his reactions. He could scent how much they wanted each other, but there was a lot of confusion as well.

“If we’re doing this, I need to see your face,” he said.

Scott rolled them both over so he was on his back on the bed and Logan was on top of him – no mean feat given all the adamantium in Logan’s body. “Like this…?”

Spitting on his finger, Logan rubbed it gently around his opening as he kept kissing him, tugging at his lower lip with his teeth, teasing his mouth wider with his tongue, and Scott let his head go back, losing himself in the dual sensation of Logan’s coaxing finger and his coaxing tongue. Logan nibbled and licked down his neck while massaging his opening, then flicked his nipples with his tongue, making his spine arch, making him whimper and open up to him completely. Logan rubbed a hand up and down Scott’s shaft, and he was already aroused, shivering with pleasure at the contact even as he squirmed a little with the embarrassment of wanting to be touched like this. Logan nuzzled him again, wishing not for the first time that he was a telepath who could just dip lightly into Scott’s mind for a quick check that he really wanted this and wasn’t going to hate himself or Logan afterwards, but all he could go by was his other senses and they were telling him that Scott was aroused, warmed up, supple, oddly relaxed, and nothing but willing. There was Vaseline in the first aid box, still within grabbing range, and he snagged it, flipping off the top and greasing his finger with it.

He made sure he had his hand clasping the back of Scott’s head so even if he couldn’t look into his visor-covered eyes, he could see the expression on his face, as he slid the tip of that finger into him. Scott looked a little shocked but no less eager and Logan crooked his forefinger to find exactly where his prostate was nestling beyond the rectal wall – easy now that he was aroused and it was swollen – only needing a moment before he found what he was looking for. A touch and Scott gasped.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for splinters left by that stick in your ass. What else?”

“Just shut up and do that again.”

Still kissing him, Logan rubbed, pressed, and stroked, watching his face to ensure nothing was hurting as Scott’s expression in turns looked surprised, aroused, and tight with unexpected pleasure.

“You did know you had a G-spot, too, right, Slim?” Logan breathed, massaging it carefully and wondering why Jean hadn’t done this physically when she was going in for all that weird dominatrix telepathic hanky panky, or if she had wanted to and Scott wouldn’t let her touch him there. He had picked up that Scott was usually prudish in the sack; he didn’t know if grief had made him reckless or he was so full of regret about all the things he’d never done in bed that Jean wanted that he was making up for lost time. Or possibly trying to punish himself. With Scott it was impossible to tell. 

Scott was panting and clutching at Logan spasmodically. He breathed, “Logan, please…” into his neck, kissing him with that same coaxing, needy pressure that made Logan forget how to exhale. “Just, do it… don’t talk just…please….”

Logan slicked the Vaseline around his cock and held Scott as he pressed forward. There was resistance and Scott arched and gasped again but then the head was in and Scott was clutching at his arms, breathing hard but definitely pulling him forward. Trying to cradle his head and keep his weight off him, Logan pushed on in, everything tight and hot and pressing against him, and Scott making those jagged little gasps that were almost pain and almost pleasure and mostly something in between and then they were kissing and fucking with Scott grabbing him, teeth gritted but tugging him in deeper, moving against him in a way that was demanding and measured at once, and Logan was trying to cushion Scott from his weight and his own impulses while Scott flexed and gasped and clutched hard enough to bruise and pulled Logan on top of him, harder and deeper. And there were a few tangled moments when he could hear Scott’s breath snagging and knew he was hurting him and exciting him at once; the sensations like nothing he had ever know before, perineum and prostate and the base of his penis all over-stimulated, while Logan was trying not to lose himself in tight heat and the need to thrust harder. 

Scott arched into the thrusts, looking beautiful and wanton as his head slammed back on the pillow and Logan kept things steady and kissed him, and they fucked the way people did the first time, not quite comfortable yet, bodies trying to find a rhythm and stuttering on it, Logan afraid of hurting him and Scott not even sure what he wanted but tugging at Logan to try to get it; Logan trying to brace himself and kiss Scott and not lose himself in the pleasure and keep his inner animal caged and Scott writhing and moaning in a way that made Logan so hot he could barely cling onto his control. He kept kissing him, every time he could reach his mouth and Scott was too lost in the new sensations to respond at first but then reached up and grabbed his hair, mouthing Logan’s lower lip with unexpected passion before their tongues met with unexpected tenderness, and Logan knew then that it wasn’t just random sensations Scott was responding to but to Logan giving him those sensations.

“You okay?” he breathed.

“Yes. God, yes.” Scott swallowed, instinctively clenching in response to Logan’s thrusts.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not. Logan, trust me, this is not my pain face.”

It kind of looked as if it was his pain face to Logan, but apparently it was the kind of pain Scott liked because he was uttering strangled little gasps now while tugging at Logan and curling into him and licking his arm and then sucking on his shoulder and Logan had probably in his long, forgotten life, had amazing sex with people far more practiced than Scott Summers would ever be, but for first-time, clumsy, not-in-synch, awkward sex between one guy who didn’t remember fucking guys and one guy who had never been fucked by a guy before, he thought they were doing a pretty good job because when the pleasure arrowed through him and tore the hot fluid from him in a heady gush and a stifled cry, Scott clutched at him hard enough to bruise. For a moment he hovered right on the brink; Logan pushing with his softening cock back and forth over his prostate as he held Scott’s cock and pumped it; until Scott followed him into an orgasm, uttering a shuddering moan that made Logan pull him into his arms and hold him tight.

He closed his eyes, hand cradling his skull, fingers flexing consolation in his hair, because there had been such sadness in that cry, and probably guilt and confusion as well – the first sex he had ever had with someone who wasn’t Jean. Whatever Scott’s messed up motives might be with his mind so grief-tangled, it was still an honor he had done Logan here, and Logan kissed him on the temple and furrowed his fingers through his hair, holding him tightly as Scott panted his way back to a usual pulse rate. Another breathless kiss and Logan gently tilted his head back so they could see each other, even if Scott’s eyes were still hidden.

“You still okay?” 

Scott nodded. “You?”

“Fine. Kind of a first for both of us – that I remember anyway.”

Scott found a wry smile that was much too charming, that crooked grin that made him look so damn young. “Not the first time your body’s done that, Logan. You definitely had some muscle memory working for you there.”

Logan kissed him again, reluctant to let him go, reluctant even to separate from him because to him this had felt like it had meaning while Scott could shrug him off, in his brittle bitchy grief-state, and act like this had never been anything that mattered. “I’m going to pull out. Okay?” He eased his way out of him and Scott hardly winced and he didn’t push Logan off.

Grabbing a towel, Logan mopped him up as well as he could, not looking down because he wanted to keep some kind of face-to-face going here, so it stayed what it had been – the two of them moving together, a mind to mind connection forged that even if it wasn’t telepathic, had meaning behind it – and not just Scott’s body cooling and dripping from something Logan’s body had done to it.

“Maybe sleep for a few hours – give your body time to heal from that beating it took in the Danger Room?”

“Okay.” As Scott made to move, Logan caught his arm, trying not to show how much this mattered.

“Here. I mean – sleep here, in my bed.”

A moment that felt endless and then Scott nodded, a little confused by why Logan was suggesting that but not opposed to the idea. Logan was pretty sure his best ally in Scott agreeing to sleeping in Logan’s bed was that his own bedroom had become such a miserable place for him, where all he ever did now was ache with grief for Jean, so the prospect of any room that wasn’t that one would probably have enticed him. He was still taking it as a sign of progress.

Logan hastily shoved the first-aid kit and their scattered clothes onto the floor and pulled the comforter over them, moving Scott into the warm center of the bed and spooning around him. He kissed him on the shoulder and although Scott seemed a little surprised that they were now almost…snuggling…he didn’t object. In fact, the look he gave Logan over his shoulder had that endearing shyness to it that no one had seen since Jean died. Logan teased his sweat-damp hair back from his face.

“Get some shut eye, Slim.” 

He tried to sound as gruff as he was fond; trying to keep things normal and Scott seemed reassured by that, something in his tone that was Logan enough for him that he just nodded and wriggled deeper into the bed. And Logan knew all the nights when Scott had been too grief-racked to sleep were also working for him there but it felt important that this was how they followed up their unexpected first time sex, with them both sleeping in the same bed, and Scott relaxing his body against his, grateful for Logan’s warmth and the comfort of his chest hair against Scott’s smooth back. Logan kissed his shoulder again, a brief indulgence and Scott offered no objection when Logan put an arm around his body and let his head rest on the same pillow. 

They weren’t breathing in time yet, but he could feel the tension draining out of Scott as he drifted towards sleep and he felt and smelt and seemed to Logan to be someone who was far more comfortable than not with sleeping in Logan’s bed in Logan’s room with Logan’s arm around him and Logan’s breath warming the back of his neck. 

_It’s a start_ , Logan thought. To them maybe having some kind of friendship that was less difficult and hostile, and perhaps to them having something more, but also perhaps Scott just didn’t do flying solo well; maybe he couldn’t function unless he was in a relationship with someone, Jean’s death leaving him doubly bereft, and if he was going to fall into a relationship with someone then Logan thought Scott could do worse than him. He didn’t expect anyone else to agree with him that what uptight, goody-goody, Leader of the X-Men, Cyclops, needed in his life was a hairy, ill-tempered, beer-drinking Wolverine, but he thought Scott could do a lot worse, and might go right ahead and do a lot worse if Logan wasn’t around to stop him. Given how grief-racked and reckless, Scott had been since Jean’s death, Logan thought it not at all beyond the realm of possibility that Scott might up and start dating the least safe person in the world, just because. He had also come to the uncomfortable personal realization that if anyone else tried dating Scott, Logan was going to want to stab them in the throat, which was inconvenient when Scott was both as biddable and predictable right now as a feral cat. 

He could possibly be coaxed, as Logan had managed to coax him into curling up on his bed, but he certainly couldn’t be ordered and he wasn’t certain he could be reasoned with. He had been prickly and unreachable for days now and so far the only breakthrough Logan had managed to make with him was when they were both naked.

He knew Hank was going to be pissed with him that this was how the ‘talk’ with Scott had gone. So was Storm, so was Bobby, so was Warren, so was Xavier. Hell, everyone was going to be pissed with him, but it had felt right then and it still felt right now. Scott had responded in a way that had surprised both of them but if his attraction to Logan had only been sleeping until today it had woken up with a vengeance. Scott had wanted this and he had liked this and it had made him feel better than anything anyone else had tried since Jean died. Ironically, the only other X-Man Logan was pretty sure would have approved of him and Scott working through their issues and Scott’s grief in the bedroom was Jean herself. She hadn’t had any illusions about either of them or their attraction to each other.

When they woke up, Logan decided that he was going to go straight to Xavier and lay it all out for him – that this wasn’t and never had been him taking advantage of a grieving Scott. He needed Scott’s adoptive father to know that there was the chance for something real between them, here, very new, and as fragile as a green shoot in a flowerpot, but worth nurturing.

 _I did not just wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am your son, Chuck. He needs this_. Logan made himself say the words, almost feeling as if Jean was there coaching him: _He needs me_. He said it and he believed it, he just wished that Scott was the kind of person to ever talk about his feelings in any meaningful fashion because if Logan was going to have to be the articulate half of this couple then they were possibly both doomed.

Logan leaned down and kissed a sleeping Scott, stroking his fingers through his crisp dark hair, coaxing back that floppy bang that always wanted to fall into his eye.

“I don’t know what you think this was, Slim,” he breathed, settling more comfortably behind him and wrapping his arms around him, his bristly jaw firmly anchored over Scott’s smooth shoulder. “But as far as I’m concerned we’re now dating.” And in his sleep, he couldn’t help noticing that Scott was breathing Logan in like his scent was a comfort to him; like this was the first night’s sleep he’d had in weeks where not everything hurt all the time. If he wasn’t completely relaxed at least he wasn’t still jangling like a wind chime. Definitely a start.

***


End file.
